This week’s figures cover trouble at HMP Brixton’s restaurant, concerning consumer perspectives on greenwashing, impressive meat redistribution efforts, and a study on food documentaries.
11. The Clink Charity may have to shut Britain’s only prison-staffed restaurant, according to reports. Civil Society website reported that the Clink restaurant at HMP Brixton must bid to keep operating beyond its 11-year tenure. The charity has already closed three other food outlets in prisons across Britain, prompting some experts in the third sector to call for an overhaul to the procurement process.
62%. The number of consumers that believe companies are greenwashing is up from a third in 2023 to almost two thirds this year, according to research by Capgemini.
50%. New figures from Company Shop Group – the redistributor of surplus products – reveal it has prevented 39 million units of surplus raw meat from going to waste in the past five years, with redistribution volumes growing by 50% in just three years. Raw meat is one of the toughest food waste challenges, the Group said, being highly perishable and tightly regulated; but it is often discarded despite being perfectly edible. A recent collaboration with Pilgrim’s UK – one of the country’s largest pork processors – has “rescued” 98 tonnes of pork, delivered a 25% increase in redistribution and created more than 108,000 packs of fresh meat for sale.
43%. The messages contained in documentaries What the Health, The Game Changers and You Are What You Eat may have been particularly effective in increasing searches indicative of intentions to shift towards a plant-based diet. Researchers at Stanford University “estimated that a standard deviation increase in searches for each film increases searches for plant-based food by up to 43% in the following week”. The academics suggested “future media campaigns advocating plant-based diets may benefit from including similar messages and narrative techniques to these three films”.
